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Hello i was browsing through czerny op 299 and noticed that in book 1( etude no 6 and 7) indicates non legato. Does this mean i have to play it staccato? I dont seem to be able to differentiate but semi staccato(non legato?), staccato and staccatissimo.And is it even possible to play it non legato with the tempo molto allegro? Thank you very much in advance.

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currently working on:Czerny School of Velocity Op 299

non legato is just that - not smoothly.This does not necesarrily imply staccato.

Just put 'staccato' out of your mind when trying to deal with non legato and think of it as how the notes sound when you play them normally, with no attempt at legato or staccato. If you absolutely must have a reference point, then think of it as halfway between staccato and legato. I've always considered it just normal playing.

Mark_C
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Registered: 11/11/09
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^^ well said ^^ -- although I think that last part might throw him off.

About the "halfway between": he needs to realize that you didn't mean it in any exact way. I think you had already covered it with the more general things you had said. And also, I wouldn't at all call it "just normal playing." It depends on a person's style and (I suppose) what kind of music he usually plays. For me, and I would guess for most people, the "non-legato" is pretty uncommon. In all the many pieces I'm playing right now, I'm hard-pressed to think of more than a handful of phrases where I use it. But maybe we're just defining it differently. For example, there are many degrees of "staccato"; maybe you would consider some of those to be this kind of "non legato."

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"Everything I say is my opinion, including the facts." :-)

It's my impression that non legato historically used to be "normal playing", and a legato or slur was a special musical effect; and that legato playing became regarded as "normal playing" only later.

Vladimiroir: The essential thing with non legato is that you can "see some daylight between the notes". You do not necessarily want any special bouncing type of technique or anything like that - you may think of it as meaning simply "do not slur".

This is one of those concepts that may be more easily performed than described.

However, if you have a concept of the differences between the execution of scalar passages in Mozart (and Haydn and early Beethoven) and "runs" in Chopin and Liszt, then ideally played Mozart passages may well be considered non-legato in the sense that the notes do not blend into one another as they often do in Chopin, but that each stands on its own, separate, but as a well-integrated piece in a larger dynamic, expressive whole.

If Chopin is a liquid stream, then Mozart is a "string of pearls" (This gets pretty purple, doesn't it?)

Doesn't matter. In practice, it means more than that. It means "short."

In fact, in piano music it (usually) also means a distinct type of touch, while "non legato" might not. I think a person would have to go very VERY far back into the depths of music history to find an example of "staccato" that only meant "not joined".

^^ well said ^^ -- although I think that last part might throw him off.

About the "halfway between": he needs to realize that you didn't mean it in any exact way. I think you had already covered it with the more general things you had said. And also, I wouldn't at all call it "just normal playing." It depends on a person's style and (I suppose) what kind of music he usually plays. For me, and I would guess for most people, the "non-legato" is pretty uncommon. In all the many pieces I'm playing right now, I'm hard-pressed to think of more than a handful of phrases where I use it. But maybe we're just defining it differently. For example, there are many degrees of "staccato"; maybe you would consider some of those to be this kind of "non legato."

Yes, exactly - I know it cannot be quantified on a scale. Bruce said it well when he said it's best demonstrated.

I just see it as simple playing without any attempt at changing the sound from that of a basic piano. Kabalevsky liked non-legato in many of his works, if the OP needs a reference point to find some recordings. Bruce's comment on pearls made me think of Beethoven's "playing on pearls" technique that he wanted his nephew Carl to learn for certain passages - probably not an exact representation of non-legato, but one of the many possibilities of it, and perhaps a good starting point for the OP. Does anyone have a reference for that?